Cake Decorating Directions

My oldest daughter made these cakes for a recent birthday in our family. We are all on the GAPS Diet, and she does a great job of creating new ways to enjoy the diet for our family. I love how she is using her cake decorating skills with the healthy ingredients on the GAPS Diet. The cake is also gluten free, grain free, and SCD legal.

Prepare the cake

Before we get in to the actual cake decorating directions, you will need to bake the cake. Prepare the batter as instructed in the recipe. Pour equal amounts into two 9 x 13 inch baking pans.

Bake the cake at 325 degrees F till done. Start checking at around 30 minutes. You can test this kind of cake for done-ness with a knife, just like a wheat flour cake. When the cake is done, the knife will come out clean.

Make heart shaped templates. One big, one small. Make sure they fit with the size of the glass pans/cakes. She made two half-heart templates for the small cakes. Trace the templates onto cardboard. Wrap in foil. After the cake cools, place templates on cake and cut them out. Then place cakes on top of the foil covered heart shaped pieces of cardboard.

Prepare the icing

Mix up the icing as directed in the recipe. Remember to multiply the recipe by five, so you have plenty.

To make chocolate icing, take some of the vanilla icing and add cocoa powder till icing is light brown.

To make pink food coloring, fill a small saucepan with water. Add about a half cup of hibiscus leaves. Boil down till there is hardly any water left. You will have a very dark, thin syrup. Mix a little at a time with buttercream frosting to get desired amount of pink color.

Note: you won’t want to make the icing too dark, as the hibiscus taste will become stronger. When the icing is pale, as it is in the picture, you do not taste the hibiscus flavor very much.

Create the heart shapes

For the big heart, there are two layers of cake, with chocolate icing in the middle.

After the cake has cooled, set the bottom layer on the heart shaped piece of cardboard covered in foil. Spread chocolate icing on top, then sit second layer on top of the icing.

Then ice the whole cake with vanilla icing.

Use a pastry bag to pipe chocolate icing around the top edge. With the pastry bag with pink icing, make flowers on top, and edge the bottom to hide the foil.

Twist the pastry bag while squeezing to make the flowers. My daughter learned this technique from Wilton’s materials. Then, add chocolate stars inside the pink flowers.

Learn to make the flowers (video):

For the small hearts, ice with pink icing. Use chocolate icing to pipe around top of the cakes, and around the bottom to hide the foil. Use a pastry bag to make small stars on top, next to the piping.

Finishing Touches

Sprinkle shredded coconut and a little crumbled up hibiscus leaves on cake and platter.

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